The Critical Path: Tools for Resolving Construction Disputes : California Construction Lawyer & Attorney for Dispute Resolution in Los Angeles, San Diego & the S.F. Bay Area

Yesterday a district court judge appointed a special master to mediate a lawsuit between four major record labels and Jammie Thomas, a Minnesota woman who allegedly downloaded and distributed more than a thousand songs on the internet in violation of federal law. The case is deemed by many to be a vanguard in the music industry’s effort to thwart the practice of peer to peer (P2P) file sharing, which is costing the music world a bundle, according to industry experts. The strategy seems to be that the threat of a lawsuit and heavy fines will deter music lovers from unlawfully downloading and distributing music to their friends.

The special master/mediator, Jonathon Lebedoff, a former chief magistrate judge of the District of Minnesota, has a great deal of mediation experience-he was responsible for the settlement of the Dalkon Shield litigation, for example. Nevertheless, the good judge must overcome a number of barriers to resolve this conflict.

Barrier No. 1-Mediation is Less Likely to Succeed if it is Involuntary

Mediation is based on the premise that parties who voluntarily participate in the process and agree to devote their time, money, and resources toward problem solving will be sufficiently invested to find a way to resolve their dispute. In this case, the record industry and Ms. Thomas were ordered to mediate the case prior to July 16, 2010, and Plaintiffs’ representative, Recording Industry Association of America, was ordered to pay the special master $400 per hour to conduct the mediation. In my experience, parties who are ordered to mediate a dispute rarely have the requisite personal investment to fully engage in the mediation process and maximize the opportunity to settle the case. They simply show up to comply with a court order but their hearts are not into it. Furthermore, unless the parties decide it is in their mutual best interest to have one side pay for the mediator, it is unwise to force one side to pay for the mediator because the side being forced to pay the full freight will resent it and the side going along for the free ride will not be sufficiently invested in the process to care if it succeeds or not.

Barrier No. 2-Bad Timing Can Destroy the Chances of a Successful Mediation

The best time to mediate a case is when both sides feel they have sufficient information to analyze the risks of trial and calculate the reasonable range of settlement. If parties attempt to mediate too early, the defense may feel it needs more information before a reasonable offer can be made; mediate too late and the plaintiff may have spent so much money on the litigation that its only viable option to recoup its fees and costs is to proceed with trial. If you wait to mediate the case until after the verdict, then the prevailing party has less risk to consider and will be less flexible in the negotiations.

In the Jammie Thomas case, the special master/mediator is being asked to mediate a dispute that has already resulted in two jury verdicts in favor of the record companies. The first trial resulted in a jury award of $222,000 in statutory damages which was thrown out by the trial judge. The second trial resulted in a jury award for $1,920,000 in statutory damages which the trial judge reduced to $54,000.

Thus Judge Lebedoff must try to facilitate a settlement by helping Ms. Thomas see the wisdom of  paying all or part of the $54,000 and convincing the record companies to waive their right to appeal the trial judge’s reduction of their seven-figure verdict. This will not be easy.

Barrier No. 3-Litigation Risk Analysis Should Include Collectability

Assuming liability and damages have been properly analyzed, the collectability of a judgment must be factored into a litigation risk analysis. In other words, does the defendant have sufficient assets to satisfy a judgment? If not, it may be very difficult to settle the dispute. With nothing to lose, a party may not feel it necessary to work out a compromise.That seems to be the case with Ms. Thomas.

Ms. Thomas is a young mother of four who works as a natural resource coordinator for the Millie Lacs Band of Ojibwa Indians. While I know nothing about her finances, it is interesting that the record companies are the ones who seem anxious to get the case settled, not Ms. Thomas. Perhaps they realize that they are spending a lot of money to enforce a judgment that may not be collectable.

Greg Sandoval of CNET News reported in January 2010 that Ms. Thomas rejected a settlement offer of $25,000. In response, according to Mr. Sandoval, the record companies released the following statement, "It is a shame that Ms. Thomas-Rasset continues to deny any responsibility for her actions rather than accept a reasonable settlement offer and put this case behind her[.]"

Barrier No. 4-A Zero-Sum Attitude in a Dispute Resolution Setting

Commercial mediation works very well when all the parties share the same objective: the resolution of a dispute. But when a party simply wants to prove it is right and that the other side is wrong, reason or logic rarely prevail in a mediation session. This zero-sum attitude does not take into account the emotional and financial toll of a trial, an appeal, and perhaps more trials and appeals.

This seems to be the situation that Judge Lebedoff faces as the mediator in the Jammie Thomas case. One of her defense lawyers told CNET that they have always sought a $0 award and that the defense lawyers planned to challenge even the reduced damage award. And though the Plaintiff record companies appear to want to settle the case, Mr. Sandoval reports that they would be just as happy to appeal the ruling of the district court judge that greatly reduced the statutory damage award.

Fortunately, all of these barriers can be overcome if the parties will set aside their trial advocacy skills and focus on their negotiation advocacy skills.This change in attitude coupled with the problem solving skills of Judge Lebedoff can overcome any barrier that may exist. Best wishes to Judge Lebedoff and the parties in the upcoming mediation.

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I like Abraham Lincoln’s adage about preparation: “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax.” This post is about sharpening our negotiating axes through a pattern of preparation that includes rigorous legal analysis. My friend and fellow mediator, Don Philbin of San Antonio, Texas wrote one of the finest articles I have read on the subject entitled, “Prepare for Mediation: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Negotiation Preparation." You can read his article by clicking here. (PDF) It will surely sharpen your negotiation skills and help you efficiently resolve many difficult disputes. Here is a summary of Don's article:

1. Rigorous Legal Analysis Forms the Basis Negotiation Preparation.

 [Preparation] is the be-all of good trial work. . . . Everything else, felicity of expression, improvisational brilliance, is a satellite around the sun. Thorough preparation is that sun.         -Louis Nizer

In reviewing the essentials of the rigorous legal analyses that lie at the base of any economic analysis, New York litigator Louis Solomon concludes that “the importance of intelligent, critical, analytical, yet realistic case evaluation cannot be overstated.” Solomon notes that case evaluations should begin early and be updated consistently, including at certain regular intervals.The goal is assessing risk, not achieving perfection. In a recent article, he condenses the evaluation process into five key steps:

identify potential issues;

evaluate issue relationships and overall case bearing;

evaluate the risk or probability of each outcome (fact and law intensive);

evaluate possible upside and downside exposure; and

identify the indirect and collateral issues from the client’s perspective.

2. Decision Tree Analysis Helps Develop and Test Scenarios

In decision tree analysis, you establish the key events of the litigation through trial. You then estimate the probability for success of the key events and the dollar values of the potential final outcomes. A decision tree visually depicts this process in as much detail as may be desired. A more complex decision tree may include the chances of success of potentially dispositive motions, such as summary judgment, or the impact of rulings on certain key evidence. On the other hand, a basic decision tree may only depict liability and damage issues.
 
When evaluating liability and damages, you start with the basic question: what is the chance of prevailing on the issue of liability? If liability can be established, what is the amount that will be awarded for damages? The outcome will provide a range for settlement purposes

The process itself is as valuable as the result because it structures our analysis and focuses our attention on the component parts of the problem. In considering the range of outcomes and their probabilities, the parties not only come to a more realistic view of their options, they are able to communicate those scenarios in a common vernacular.

You can read my post on decision trees entiled, Dispute Resolution, Decision Trees, and Albert Einstein by clicking here.

3. Anchoring

As we move from dispute analysis to negotiation planning, we are often faced with the decision to either make the first offer or await one from the other side. That decision turns on a number of variables. One commentator argues that anchoring “describes the process by which the human mind does virtually all of its inferential work.” Anchors function much like our “gut” reactions to the value of an object or lawsuit – the “thin slice” our subconscious sends our conscious mind to evaluate. The more relevant information our analytical mind has, the less we are swayed by an unreasonable anchor. Mistaken or misguided anchors can increase the odds of impasse and have other unintended consequences.

4. Preparation Provides a Framework for Options

Litigants must make choices [about the claims] or turn them over to others for a binding decision. Unwilling to drain every swamp looking for evidence, they are often faced with making decisions with less than perfect information. The challenge then is to make the best decision with the information they do have or budget an appropriate amount based upon the developed choices. Economic analysis helps narrow the field from the legally possible to the economically viable

Outstanding trial lawyers spent considerable time and effort honing their skills to be effective courtroom advocates. But since most cases settle before a verdict is reached, it is equally important to develop effective negotiation advocacy skills. I hope you will spend some time with Don's article to help you sharpen your ax.

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Bear with me as I pay my respects to a lifelong hero who influenced my life for good:

John Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood, was the greatest coach of all-time. He passed away June 4, 2010; 4 months shy of his 100^th birthday. While he will be remembered for his 10 NCAA basketball championships as the head coach of the UCLA Bruins, he always considered himself first and foremost a teacher. He taught principles of living based on his Pyramid of Success, and shared his wisdom through sayings that have been quoted for decades in virtually every educational, athletic, professional, and business forum and setting.

Even though I was never very good at handling a basketball (giving hard fouls was my forte), I have been pretty good at finding ways to sharpen my skills as a negotiator and a mediator.

 Here are a few of the things I learned from Coach Wooden’s playbook:

• PREPARATION: “Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.”
• HARD WORK: “Nothing will work unless you do.”
• PATIENCE: “Do not let what you can not do interfere with what you can do.”
• PERSEVERANCE: “It’s not so important who starts the game as who finishes it.”

And here is how I have applied these sayings of his to the field of negotiations and dispute resolution:

1. If you do not prepare for mediation, you are preparing for the mediation to fail. Claims are not settled in a vacuum, they must be rigorously measured against the realities of trial before the negotiations begin. Questions about liability and damages, evidence and admissibility, costs and fees, must all be evaluated; the impact of litigation and trial on clients in terms of time, emotion, and resources must be scrutinized; and an objective study of the strengths and weaknesses of the other side’s positions must be undertaken in advance of the mediation. This is not to say that extensive discovery on every conceivable issue must be completed but sufficient thought must be given to these issues to enable you to negotiate to the best of your ability and with your client’s best interests in mind.
2. Mediation does not work unless the parties are willing to work on both objective and subjective levels. They work better when lawyers are willing to set aside trial advocacy skills in favor of negotiation advocacy skills.  They work best when both sides focus on finding ways to resolve the dispute instead of perpetuating it.
3. Do not let the tactics of the other side interfere with the implementation of your settlement strategy. You can not control your opponent but your preparations will enable you to take control of the negotiations by anchoring the offers and demands within a reasonable settlement range based on the facts of the case, the applicable law, and the record of verdicts in similar cases. Studies have shown that the first party to make a reasonable demand or offer anchors the negotiations in his favor. Thereafter, the negotiations tend to be driven in that direction.
4. Have the mindset that you are going to see the mediation process through to the end. Be prepared to endure the ups and downs of a mediation session. Don’t allow your emotions to take you out of your game plan. Unfortunately, I see this happen all too often. For example, plaintiff believes the reasonable range of settlement to be $500,000 to 250,000. The defense, believes the settlement value is between $150,000 to 225,000. In other words, unbeknown to each other, they begin the negotiation with only $25,000 separating Plaintiff’s potential lowest demand and the defendant’s potential highest offer. However, the plaintiff wants to give himself plenty of room to negotiate so he makes an initial demand of $1,000,000. The defendant’s reacts emotionally to this number: “It’s outrageous; they are not negotiating in good faith; I’m not even going to respond with a counter offer.” After some time, defendant may respond with an equally ridicules number, $25,000. How does the plaintiff react? The same way and before you know it, both sides become frustrated and the mediator declares an impasse. If you are going to convene mediation, be prepared to finish the process. Allow the mediator to help the parties work through the process to find clarity and to maximize the chances for a reasonable resolution of the dispute.

Mediators are not miracle workers; they can not create a settlement out of thin air, and no amount of their “hot air” will convince parties to settle a case that has not undergone rigorous analysis by both sides. Take a page from Coach Wooden’s playbook: prepare, work hard, control what you can, and endure to the end. And when you are in the middle of a difficult negotiation, remember one more thing John Wooden taught, "Flexibility is the key to stability."

Thank you, Coach Wooden. Thanks for everything.

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Pre-nuptial agreements (or “What Happens When Our Marriage Fails?” agreements) seem awfully cold-hearted. We read about them when the Tiger Woods and Paul McCartneys of the world have marital melt-downs. Most people can’t imagine building a marriage on the foundation of such a document. I quess it goes something like this:“You are my soul mate, my one and only, now sign this…” While many would be reluctant to ask their betrothed to contemplate divorce before the "I dos" are even spoken, construction professionals should not be shy about making contractual arrangements for the disputes that will likely arise during the course of construction. 

Construction professionals often fall in love with an exciting project or can’t wait to be associated with a certain owner or design team, and they enter into contractual relationships without giving much thought to what happens if the project fails. Or they are so enamored with the prospect of a lucrative venture that they do not want to consider what happens if someone breaches the contract. Instead most people rely on boilerplate contractual language that may or may not be suitable for the proposed project, and hope for the best. There is a better way.

Dispute resolution provisions in contracts (or “What Happens When Claims Arise?” provisions) are the product of this cold-hearted reality: the plans and specifications, means and methods of construction and management of a project are rarely perfect. Since everyone knows this why do disputing parties spend so much time and money trying to prove in a court of law that they are right and the other guy is wrong? Why not draft dispute resolution procedures that empower parties to resolve disputes in the most balanced, cost-effective way possible? During my 25 years as a construction lawyer, I was always amazed when sophisticated parties would bemoan the cost and time drain of litigation but never changed their contracts to limit the impact of litigation on their businesses.

There is much that can be done during the contracting phase that can prepare the parties to resolve their disputes in a more cost effective manner. For example, many construction contracts include provisions that require parties to submit to mediation before a lawsuit is even filed. Other contracts require that the parties mediate their dispute as a first step and if that fails, proceed to arbitration. Since arbitration can be as expensive as a trial in civil court, some contracts include limitations on the arbitration process.

An arbitration provision that limited discovery was the subject of a recent California Court of Appeals decision (PDF) in a case where a corporate employer fired one of its in-house attorneys, and he sued for wrongful termination. The corporate employer then filed a motion to compel arbitration in accordance with the terms of the employment contract. The lawyer opposed arbitration on the grounds that the arbitration provision was unenforceable due to the discovery limitations imposed by the contract. The trial court found that the provision concerning witness depositions was flawed, declined to sever the provision, and denied the employer’s motion to compel arbitration.

The Court of Appeal reversed the trial court, stating:

We disagree with the trial court for two reasons. First, arbitration is meant to be a streamlined procedure. Limitations on discovery, including the number of depositions, is one of the ways streamlining is achieved. In Armendariz [a California Supreme Court case], the court stated that the parties are entitled to discovery sufficient to vindicate their claims. The court also acknowledged that discovery limitations are an integral and permissible part of the arbitration process. "'Adequate'" discovery does not mean "unfettered" discovery. Armendariz specifically recognized that parties may agree to something less than the full panoply of discovery permitted under the California Arbitration Act, Code of Civil Procedure section 1283.05. (Armendariz, supra, at pp. 105-106; see also Martinez v. Master Protection Corporation (2004) 118 Cal.App.4th 107, 118-119 [agreement permitting one deposition and a document request did not as a matter of law fail to afford adequate discovery]; Mercuro, supra, at p. 183 [provision permitting an arbitrator to authorize additional depositions for "good cause" was not unconscionable].)

The discovery provision reviewed by the Court of Appeal is an example of careful pre-dispute lawyering:

Each party shall have the right to take the deposition of one individual and any expert witness designated by the other party. Each party also shall have the right to make requests for production of documents to any party. The subpoena right specified below in paragraph 4 [[e]ach party shall have the right to subpoena witnesses and documents for the arbitration'] shall be applicable to discovery pursuant to this paragraph. Additional discovery may be had where the Arbitrator selected pursuant to this Agreement so orders, upon a showing of need.

I am not suggesting that this provision is ideal in the context of a construction contract, but it does illustrate the benefit of careful draftsmanship to control the dispute resolution process and provide an efficient, cost effective way to manage claims. In addition to discovery issues, and depending on the laws of your state, arbitration provisions could be drafted to cover rules of evidence, the scope of the arbitrator’s authority, trial court review and appellate rights, the definition of prevailing party and the circumstances by which attorney fees and costs are awarded, all of which could be drafted in a way that incentivizes the parties to settle disputes prior to the arbitration proceedings.

The bottom line is this: construction professionals deal with risk every day. Those who manage it best generally do the best. Carefully drafted dispute resolution provisions are an important part of preparing for the risks associated with construction projects. Therefore, you should draft them with the same degree of care that you give to every other aspect of a project, for the success and profitability of a project can not be measured until all disputes are resolved.

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